Devotion

In the introduction to The Devout Life, Frances de Sales (1567-1622) makes the following observations about devotion.

…everyone paints devotion according to his own passions and fancies. Someone given to fasting thinks himself very devout if he fasts although his heart may be filled with hatred. Much concerned with sobriety, he doesn’t care to wet his tongue with wine or even water but won’t hesitate to drink deep of his neighbor’s blood by detraction and gossip.

Another person thinks himself devout because he daily recites a vast number of prayers, but after saying them he utters the most disagreeable, arrogant, and harmful words at home and among the neighbors. Another gladly takes a coin out of his purse and gives it to the poor, but he cannot extract kindness from his heart to forgive his enemies.

Another forgives his enemies but never pays his creditors unless compelled to do so by force of law. All these individuals are usually considered to be devout, but they are no means such. Saul’s servants searched for David in his house but David’s wife, Michal, had put a statue on his bed, covering it with David’s clothes, and thus led them to think it was David himself who was lying there sick and sleeping. In the same manner, many persons clothe themselves with certain outward actions connected with holy devotion, and the world believes that they are truly devout and spiritual whereas they are in fact nothing but copies and phantoms of devotion.

de Sales saw a devout life as one that is lived in two dimensions. The vertical dimension is the all consuming love of God. This love creates in us such a desire to be with God that we eagerly engage in the spiritual disciplines in order to draw closer to him. A life lived well in the vertical dimension overflows into the horizontal dimension of love and service for others.

When God spoke the ten commandments four of them concerned devotion to God and six of them concerned living a life that honored and cared for others. When we put God first, truly loving him as our only God, wholeheartedly respecting his name and his institutions then we are able to genuinely love, honor, and respect our fellow human beings. True devotion to God is expressed in love and service to others.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe him,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Isaiah 58:6-7

This week may each of us show our love for God through acts of selfless service to others. May God create in each of us a deeper longing for true devotion to Him.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no idea why this post is single spaced. I've tried and tried to correct it but it has a mind of its own. My apologies but I give up!!!